B4| Thursday, March 12, 2020 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
MGM HoldingsInc. post-
poned its planned April release
of the James Bond film “No
Time to Die” until November.
Disney hasn’t been able to re-
lease family-friendly titles like
“The Call of Wild” and Pixar’s
“Onward” in China.SonyCorp.
said Tuesday it was delaying
the release of “Peter Rabbit 2:
The Runaway” until August.
While domestic ticket sales
disappointed, international box
office revenues grew slightly in
every other region, led by Asia
Pacific, which rose 4% in 2019.
China, Japan and South Korea
ranked as the top three inter-
national box office markets.grossing movie ever.
In early 2020, many pre-
dicted, China would pass the
U.S. as the world’s largest box-
office market. That was before
the coronavirus outbreak,
which caused the government
in China to shut the nation’s
nearly 70,000 theaters last
month. Theaters in Japan and
South Korea have also experi-
enced disruptions.
This year is all but guaran-
teed to see box-office declines
as theaters outside the U.S.
close amid concerns of the vi-
rus. The high-profile produc-
tions affected by the outbreak
have been piling up.TECHNOLOGY WSJ.com/Tech
Video-sharing platform Tik-
Tok said it is opening a new
facility in Los Angeles aimed
at providing more transpar-
ency to outsiders about its op-
erations, another move by the
Chinese-owned app to address
scrutiny from U.S. officials and
lawmakers.
TikTok said its new “trans-
parency center,” scheduled to
open in May at its major U.S.
hub, would allow outside ob-
servers to view how teams at
the company moderate con-
tent. It will eventually also
provide information on Tik-
Tok’s source code and its data-
privacy and security efforts,
the company said.
TikTok’s rise to social-me-
dia success has prompted
questions from U.S. authorities
worried it could pose a na-
tional-security threat because
it is owned by Chinese con-Supa Dupa Humble performed during the Chinese-owned video app’s Halloween party last year.PRESLEY ANN/GETTY IMAGES FOR TIKTOKthe rise of Amazon.com Inc.
Starboard and eBay have
been in discussions on and off
in recent weeks, some of the
people said, and in late Feb-
ruary eBay said it is exploring
options for the classifieds
business, which primarily op-
erates overseas.
Ebay said it is in discus-
sions with multiple potential
buyers of the unit, which
could be worth $10 billion.
Private-equity firms including
TPG and Blackstone Group
Inc., as well as internet con-
glomerate Naspers Ltd., Ger-
man publishing company Axel
Springer SE and others have
expressed interest, people fa-
miliar with the matter have
said.
The marketplace business
has also drawn takeover in-
terest. New York Stock Ex-
change operator Interconti-
nental Exchange Inc.
approached eBay about a deal
before its own shareholders
balked, forcing it to back off
the idea.
EBay, which has a market
value of roughly $28 billion,
has been without a perma-
nent chief executive since
Devin Wenig departed in Sep-
tember following clashes with
the board. The interim CEO is
Scott Schenkel, who previ-
ously served as chief financial
officer.
Another activist, Elliott
Management Corp., has
board representation in the
form of a seat for Jesse Cohn,
a senior official at the hedge-
fund firm. Starboard said in
February that it owns more
than 1% of eBay’s shares,
while Elliott has said it owns
a stake of more than 4%.EBayInc. is facing a re-
newed challenge from activist
investorStarboard ValueLP,
which has nominated a slate
of directors to the board of
the online marketplace, ac-
cording to people familiar
with the matter.
Starboard, which last year
won the right to help fill one
seat on eBay’s board, pri-
vately nominated an addi-
tional minority slate of direc-
tors recently, the people said.
Assuming there isn’t some
sort of settlement by then,
the nominees would be up for
election at the San Jose, Ca-
lif., company’s annual meeting
in June.
Starboard has publicly ex-
pressed frustration that eBay
hasn’t moved quickly enough
to sell its online-classified-
ads business or make changes
to its board. Ebay recently
closed the roughly $4 billion
sale of its StubHub ticketing
business. That leaves the
company with the classified
business and its core market-
place, which connects buyers
and sellers of everything from
electronics to collectibles.
It couldn’t be learned how
many directors Starboard
nominated to eBay’s 14-per-
son board. Among the nomi-
nees is Starboard’s head of
research, Peter Feld, who also
sits on the boards of compa-
nies including NortonLifeLock
Inc.
The move comes after a tu-
multuous period for eBay, a
darling of the early internet
economy whose marketplace
business has been eroded by
BYCORRIEDRIEBUSCH
ANDCARALOMBARDO
Activist Seeks
Slate of Picks
ForeBayBoard
prepare to unveil their own
streaming services.Walt Dis-
neyCo.,AppleInc. andAma-
zon.com Inc. already have
their own platforms.
Online content is growing,
and it is increasingly being
consumed on mobile devices—
at nearly four hours a day for
Americans, who spent more
time on their phones, exclud-
ing voice activities, than
watching television in 2019 for
the first time ever, according
to the MPA.
Additionally, more than 85%
of children between the ages of
2 and 17 watch TV shows or
movies on mobile devices, the
association said.
Seeking to meet the grow-
ing demand, television produc-
ers created 532 original
scripted series in 2019, up
from 496 the previous year, ac-
cording to the MPA.
The banner year for digital
consumption stood in contrast
to global box office revenues,
which ticked up just 1% to
$42.2 billion. International
ticket sales grew by 3% in- They dropped 4% in the
U.S. and Canada, as attendance
fell by 5% and ticket prices in-
creased by 1%.
The global box office stag-
nated even though Disney re-
leased six films that each
grossed more than $1 billion,
including “Avengers: End-
game,” which took in a $2.8
billion global haul, surpassing
2009’s “Avatar” as the highest-
Continued from page B1Movies’
Digital
Take Soars
Globaltheatricalandhome/
mobileentertainmentmarket*Includes digital rentals or purchases of television and movies, plus money spent on subscription
streaming services viewed on all devices (home or mobile)
Source: Motion Picture Association$50billion0102030402015 ’16 ’17 ’18 ’19Physical
(Blu-ray/DVD)Digital*TheatricalGlobalboxoffice$400102030billion’16 ’17 ’18 ’19U.S./Canada InternationalDigitalentertainmentmarket*$300510152025billion’1620152015 ’17 ’18 ’19U.S. InternationalAstheatricalticketssalesremainflatandDVDandBlu-ray
revenuesfall,digitalentertainmentsoars.glomerateByteDanceInc.
U.S. regulators late last
year started weighing whether
TikTok poses a security threat
after lawmakers from both
parties expressed worry that
the company was censoring
content to appease the Chi-
nese government and could be
making user data accessible to
Beijing. Earlier this year, U.S.
Coast Guard and Air Force of-
ficials barred their members
from using TikTok on govern-
ment-issued devices after sim-
ilar guidance by other U.S.
military branches.
TikTok has said it hasn’t
and won’t share U.S. user data
with the Chinese government.
TikTok had about 24 million
active users in the U.S. as of
January, according to mobile
data and analytics firm App
Annie.
Its popularity has been
fueled mostly by videos of
dance-offs and other light-hearted content, but its mod-
eration practices have re-
ceived new attention as it has
become a platform for politi-
cal content and has been
found to have content from ex-
tremist groups such as Islamic
State.
Important details about the
company’s new center weren’t
disclosed. Outside observers
will get a view into issues in-
cluding how TikTok modera-
tors apply company guidelines
and identify potential viola-
tions, and how user-flagged
concerns are handled, accord-
ing to the company, which said
government and industry ex-
perts would be among those
invited to review its practices.
But the company declined
to say how such experts would
be chosen or what part of
what the observers see could
be made public. It said the fa-
cility will have different areas
with differing levels of access.BYSEBASTIANHERRERAVideo Platform TikTok Vows
A Peek at Its Security Efforts
‘The Call of the Wild,’ starring Harrison Ford, hasn’t played in Chinese theaters amid the health crisis.20TH CENTURY FOX/EVERETT COLLECTIONAT&TInc. Chief Executive
Randall Stephenson received
$32 million in compensation
last year after a headline-
grabbing hedge-fund battle
ended up boosting the telecom
and media giant’s share price.
Mr. Stephenson’s overall
compensation climbed 10% in
2019 almost entirely on the
strength of AT&T’s stock ap-
preciation. Shares of the Dal-
las company gained about 37%
during the year.
Pay for John Stankey, the
company’s No. 2 executive and
head of its WarnerMedia divi-
sion, rose to $22.5 million in
2019, up from $16.6 million a
year earlier. As with other ex-
ecutives, the media boss’s
long-term stock and option
awards dwarfed his annual
cash salary.
Former telecom division
chief John Donovan’s 2019
compensation jumped to $27
million, including nearly $10
million in other pay that in-
cluded a retirement bonus. Mr.
Donovan ran the lion’s share
of AT&T’s operations until his
abrupt departure in August.
AT&T later gave Mr. Stankey
the additional title of chief op-
erating officer, a new post that
reports directly to the CEO.
AT&T spent the last months
of 2019 contending with a
public challenge from hedge
fund Elliott Management,
which criticized some of the
company’s decisions and ques-
tioned its handling of Mr. Don-
ovan’s departure.
The standoff ended in a
truce that kept top executives
in their posts and spurred a
stock buyback plan.BYDREWFITZGERALDAT&T
Chief Got
$32 Million
Last Year
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